Yoga
The ultimate goal of yoga is to reach complete peacefulness of body and mind, helping you relax and manage stress and anxiety. Traditional yoga philosophy requires that students adhere to this mission through behavior, diet and meditation. But if you"re simply looking for better stress management and not an entire lifestyle change, yoga can still help.
Yoga improves our concentration and can make us stronger both physically and emotionally. It is widely recognized as an excellent stress management tool; teaching us to relax, it aids restful sleep and helps foster spiritual peace and contentment.
Yoga for Stress Management
Yoga is very good for stress. It offers gentle asana, relaxation, pranayama, meditation, shat kriyas and hand mudras. The complete breath exercise can be done at your desk, in the car or anywhere else when you start to feel stressed out. Meditation helps calm your mind, teaching you to relax at will and giving you a quick mental vacation whenever you need one. And daily practice of three or four yoga poses will help ease knotted muscles. The methods of classical yoga include ethical disciplines, physical postures, breathing control and meditation. Virtually everyone can see physical benefits from yoga, and its practice can also give psychological benefits, such as stress reduction and a sense of well-being, and spiritual benefits, such as a feeling of connectedness with God or Spirit, or a feeling of transcendence.
Laughter Yoga
Laughter Yoga is supported by powerful tools derived from the Western psycho analytical methods as well as Eastern spiritual laws. It will help you to stay in high spirits when life throws up challenges. It will enhance your ability to laugh and smile when dealing with negative emotions, situations and negative or difficult people.
Virtually everyone can see physical benefits from yoga, and its practice can also give psychological benefits, such as stress reduction and a sense of well-being, and spiritual benefits, such as a feeling of connectedness with God or Spirit, or a feeling of transcendence. When we laugh our bodies release a cocktail of hormones & chemicals that have startling positive effects on our system. Stress is reduced, blood pressure drops, depression is lifted, your immune system is boosted & more. Laughter is nature"s stress buster. It lifts our spirits with a happy high that makes us feel good and improves our behavior towards others.
Hatha Yoga
Hatha Yoga as "a stairway to the heights of Raja Yoga", hence a preparatory stage of physical purification that renders the body fit for the practice of higher meditation. The Asanas and Pranayama in Raja Yoga were what the Hindu Yogis used to physically train their body for long periods of meditation. This practice is called shatkarma. Sometimes Hatha Yoga is also translated as the "forcefull yoga", because it seems to require the most physical excercises of all yoga types. Hatha Yoga is certainly the yoga that is the best known in the West, which is probably why so many definitions of Hatha Yoga exist.
Hatha yoga is mostly yoga that prepares the body for the spiritual path via physical and breathing exercises, and asceticism. Hatha yoga is the most superficial component of yoga, the one that is preoccupied merely with the means to the means. It prepares and conditions the body so that the mind can practice meditation more or less without obstacles. Hatha yoga, as a main rather than an accessory practice, is quite a tiresome and roundabout way to enlightenment.